Transient
by LeFire
Summary: A naval engagement in the bitter cold of the Artic...


December was arriving… But when one was aboard a ship stationed between the icy coasts of Alaska and Siberia, nothing really changed. It was the same… The wind, the icy cold, and the bleak grey waters.

For the men aboard the USS _Iowa_ and her battlegroup, however, there was something to be hopeful for.

With the Russian war machine stalled on the American Front and the bloody defeat of an entire Soviet army on the European Front, the Red's were off-balanced. Now, all that remained was for the imminent armoured assault on the Artic Front to strike the final nail into the communist heart of the USSR.

The general statement was "It'll be over by Christmas…" After the defeats the Soviets had suffered under the leadership of Romanov, several men were even hoping that the Russians would finish the job for them. Afterall, incompetent leaders had a way of being disposed by their own subordinates.

Hope, however, was the most insidious evil of all…. Legend has it that when Hope had escaped Pandora's Box before she had managed to close it, it had borne the face of an angel… 

The USS _Iowa_ was the latest of the United States Navy carriers. Together with her battlegroup, the ship could fend off air threats with her Aegis cruisers, take out submarines with her escort destroyers, or call down a devastating airstrike with her airgroup.

A mile away sailed a recently refurbished ship, the HMS _Warspite_. An old World War 1 relic, she had survived the 1914 to 1918 conflict and fought in the World War 2 (otherwise known as the Red War or Stalin War) during the 1940's to 1950's. Mothballed after that, the British had managed to scrape together funds to restore her to her former glory. The battlecruiser mounted 16-inch guns and boasted impressive armour protection. Her battle control and bridge alone were shielded by seventeen inches of Class A steel plate.

Her resurrection was due to the painful lesson inflicted on the Brits just a couple of months ago. A single Soviet guided-missile battlecruiser, the _Zaitzef_ , had slipped into the Channel undetected in the dead of the night. Skirting the coast and avoiding British submarines, she had succeeded in getting close enough to a convoy to fire off two salvoes of surface-to-surface missiles before turning tail and heading home at flank speed.

Aiming for the escorts first, the single Russian raider had snapped the destroyer HMS _Valour_ into two with a missile that had struck behind her forward funnel. Another missile had slammed into the helideck of the HMS _Revenge_. Although the warhead ended up being a dud, the impact of four thousand pounds of steel moving at 1700 miles an hour had shredded the destroyer's thinly armoured insides. Set ablaze, the _Revenge_ had followed her sister ship to the bottom a day later. None of the four transports with the two destroyers had survived, all four wiped out by the second salvo of SS-N-19 missiles.

With the refurbished battlecruisers, the Allies had been given ships that could take a missile or two while being able to reply with heavy 2,700-pound armour-piercing shells. However, the _Warspite_ was all that was available at the moment.

The first US battleship to be recommissioned had struck a soviet-laid mine 2 hours after leaving New York harbour. She had limped back home in red-faced defeat to join the long list of damaged ships awaiting repairs in the already overtaxed naval base.

Cruising far forward of the 'thundering herd' were two Sea-Wolf class submarines, the USS _Reagan_ and USS _Midge_. The nuclear powered submarines were on 50 percent alert, sonar operators listening in to their passive systems and towed array. The long 'tail' of sensitive noise-receivers on the steel cable towed by each of the two subs collected the myriad sounds of the sea and fed them into the screens of the sonar operators.

Both subs were not giving out any sonar pulses, relying only on the expertise of their sonarmen to identify any unknown contact. Supporting them were the Sea Ospreys, naval versions of the helicopter/fixed-wing transport aircraft, each armed with Mark 48 torpedoes. The Sea Ospreys operated off destroyer helidecks, replacing the old Sea King antisub helicopters.

The _Stalingrad_ was an Alfa class submarine. Contrary to common belief, not all Soviet submarines were of the 'Typhoon' class. There were Tangos, Victors, Oscars, Novembers… But of all these, the Alfa took the crown.

Powered by a unique but very expensive liquid-metal heat exchanger superior to the Allies pressurised water technology, the Alpha was capable of reaching speeds of 46 knots submerged and a crush depth of four thousand feet. It was also very silent. In other words, it was superior to the Sea Wolf in every aspect except its sonar.

Captain Volery Nacha had the sub at total war-condition silence. With only the pumps of her nuclear reactor working, the Alpha was exceedingly hard to detect. The American fleet was another story. Try as they might, it was impossible to silence an entire surface fleet of various ships. Also, it was totally impossible to silence an aircraft carrier. Doing so would mean shutting down flight operations and losing the advantage of having a carrier in the first place. The Alpha was directly astride the path of the fleet.

So far, the Americans had been dropping active sonar buoys ahead of their formation with their Ospreys. Since it was impossible to silence the fleet, the only other option was brute force… to blast the ocean depths with active sonar pulses in the hopes of detecting any hidden soviet subs.

Volery studied the plot and noted the pattern of the sonarbuoys. He knew that there were Allied subs out there… it was standard practise for American fleets to have at least one sub as an underwater scout.

In submarine warfare, there were no long glorious slugging matches, of great guns exchanging volleys of fire, dented armour and flying colours.

Sub warfare was different, each one keeping total silence while hoping for the other to make a mistake. Once a sub was detected, all bets were off when a torp was in the water… It was impossible to tell if a torp was headed your way until it was too late to evade. Most captains would push their subs to flank speed and fire back.

Then the subs would flee at top speed from incoming torps. In the noise created, all sense of order disappeared… it took a calm and patient officer to become a good sub captain. Mistakes were invariably fatal… once hit, a sub was almost certain to die. Even if the initial hit did not sink it, the lost of streamlining due to battle damage meant noise… which meant a second torp inbound for the cripple.

And Volery was a patient man. Now, however, was a time for action. The American Ospreys had been too predictable. They had been laying sonarbuoys at a predictable pattern and Volery had used the cover provided by the fleet noise to creep at five knots between two sonarbuoys.

It had taken half an hour of tension to creep closer to the fleet, each of the men sweating in the knowledge that if any of the sonar operators on the Ospreys had detected the slight difference in returned sound energy, the _Stalingrad_ would have a 48 dunked on her from above. All hands were already at battle stations; ready to unleash a volley of torps in the general direction of the fleet should the sub be detected and attacked before it could close.

He (all Russian ships were male) was now between the patrolling Ospreys and the fleet. No sonarbuoys were active there, for pinging the water here would mean bouncing echoes off the American subs, giving away their position. Volery was now simply waiting for the fleet to pass close to him, relying on the presence of fleet noise to get to point-blank range.

He would then empty a wide salvo of torpedos at the biggest contacts, paying special attention to the one giving off aircraft elevator noise. At such close range, the torps would strike home in mere seconds, flooding the ocean with the sounds of explosions and forcing sonar operators to turn down their sets or face permanent hearing loss.

In the ensuing chaos, with the Ospreys reluctant to dump torps in the vicinity of their own ships and subs, the _Stalingrad_ would escape.

The fleet was getting closer. Volery turned and snapped off an order.

"Take her up, hundred meters"

The first officer confirmed the captain's order and the planesman eased his controls backwards.

"Rising… angle ten… level and steady at hundred meters, sir"

Volery turned to his officer of the deck. His voice was quiet but terse.

"Battle stations."

Immediately, soft chime of the alert filled the silent sub. Everyone was already in position, but the chime now raised the tension to the max… Each man now knew that if a mistake was made in the next few minutes, it would be the last for _Stalingrad_ and her crew.

"Bearing to six biggest targets?" Volery asked.

The officer of the deck rattled them off. Volery gave the next order to face the sub at the fleet.

Five hundred meters away, Sonarman Jones blinked. He had seen a slight spike in his display. Could it be the sound of a soviet sub creeping closer to the fleet? Surely the Red had not managed to get _that_ close? Jones frowned, knowing that the _Iowa_ was only two miles away, launching a couple of F-14 Tomcats to supplement the air patrol. Jones' vessel, the USS _Archer_, was part of the third layer of defences. The first were the two Sea Wolf's, the next being the Aegis cruisers. HMS _Warspite_ cruised a mile off on the other side of _Iowa_.

The spike did not reappear… and Jones relaxed slightly. Probably just the krill, great schools of shrimp that gave off clacking noises during their mating season. Nothing to worry about.

"Tubes one, two, three, four, five, six loaded, sir. Bearing matched with target Sierra One."

"Warheads armed. Calculate final target solution." Volery ordered.

"Warheads armed, sir."

"Solution ready, sir."

Volery watched the plot. "Flood the tubes. Match bearing and shoot. Tubes one through six."

The whoosh of water entering the opened tubes was a dead giveaway… But it was too late… Sonarman Jones turned and yelled.

"Transient! Transient! Probable underwater contact! Range five hundred! Bearing two-five-zero!"

'Transient' meant a man-made noise… The sonar officer spun around, horror on his face…

The fire control officer was now the man to watch. He turned from the Volery and snapped, "Stand by! Match bearing and shoot!"

The six torpedoes shot out of their tubes… it was 'noisy' launch, as compared to a 'silent' launch whereby a torp was gently ejected from the tube with compressed air and allowed to glide closer to the targer on low power. 'Noisy' launch was a giveaway, but it gave the torpedo a fast increase in speed and considerably less reaction time for the enemy.

"Hard right rudder! Bearing three seven zero! Flank speed! Full angle dive! Release decoys!" Volery ordered. Before his had finished, the _Stalingrad_ was tilting, her powerful powerplant roaring into life as decoys shot out of her twin rear tubes. Volery held on to a handrail as the sub ploughed through the water.

Above them, the high screech of six torpedoes had alerted every Allied ship. Noise levels leaped as engines were slammed to full speed. The fleet scattered in a starburst pattern, each ship zigzagging as decoy noisemakers were dropped into the sea.

The _Iowa_ got her priorities correct. The ship went to full speed and turned away abruptly. A Tomcat coming in for landing was thrown off its path, the fighter yawing crazily as the pilot tried to match the turning ship. He turned away at the last moment, his afterburners flaring as he pulled up desperately. The airspeed dropped quickly, and despite the swept-forward wings, which afforded the big plane better lift, the laws of physics took over.

The Tomcat tipped up and stalled before cartwheeling into the sea. A wing snapped off, spilling fuel onto the afterburner flame and exploding the fighter in a brief fireball that quickly disappeared in the wake of the _Iowa_.

There was too little time to react… The captain of _Iowa_ called for all hands to 'brace for impact' as the first torpedo came in.

A miracle happened, the torp turning away at the last moment to chase a decoy… the fifty pound barrel saving the massive ship from impact.

The second torpedo made no mistakes. It slammed into the _Iowa_ 's stern at the waterline. There was a savage explosion that knocked down hundreds of men. A massive hole fifty feet long and a dozen high appeared in her. The sudden explosion also caused massive damage on the hangar deck. Costly planes were knocked against each other or tipped over. Thankfully, there were no fire or secondary explosions… However, the hangar deck was a total wreck. Flight operations effectively went out the window.

A massive explosion two hundred meters from _Warspite_ indicated one of the soviet fish striking a garbage can sized decoy. Fragments smacked off the battlecruiser's heavy armour. The only casualty was a sailor who was scalded by hot liquid from a coffeepot that had been knocked off its antiroll perch, exploding at his feet.

_Archer_ was hit as well. It was again not a direct hit, the torpedo striking a decoy a hundred meters away. However, the destroyer was no _Warspite._ The explosion buckled and peppered her armour plates along the portside. She took on a massive list as water flooded in. Her Osprey, which had been on the deck when the torp had come in, became a casualty when it tipped over and fell into the sea, the cables securing the aircraft snapped by the shock of the torp's warhead.

The remaining two torpedoes went wild, churning on past the fleet and running out of fuel before plummeting quietly into the depths.

As for the _Stalingrad_… Despite half a dozen torpedoes fired at possible contacts, the sub slipped away in the noise and churning water from the torpedo explosions. After the last torpedo lost lock and nearly took out the USS _Reagan_, the Americans called off the search.

There was another situation developing… The radar screens of several Tomcats filled with static with jamming coming from the west.

The source was airborne… and the _Iowa_ was still unable to resume flight operations. On the Tomcats and Hornets, pilots tried not to look at their fuel gauges as the jamming intensified.

It had been a tough day… and it promised to get harder very soon.


End file.
